Day 9 of the 40 day spiritual journey from the book 'The Purpose Driven Life
- what on earth am I here for?' by Rick Warren
My insights from Day 9:
Keeping within his first of 5 Purposes, Purpose 1 'You were planned
for Gods pleasure'
Rick focuses on how we can make God smile, as the second of 7
sub- purposes within Purpose 1.
He may, or may not like this comparison, but to me he is like the
Buddha who logically categorises, and sub-categorises everything,
somewhat too uniformally, probably for the logical brain to understand?
Anyway, he talks about making God smile, as a key sub-purpose,
when we love him, when we totally trust him, when we obey him,
praise and thank him, and when we perform at our best for him
fully using our unique given and developed capabilities.
I don't have a problem with any of that, and it certainly does help
considerably to giving us a worthy purpose in life.
But it's also quite interesting to think about what Rick is saying as
God seeking, needing and getting pleasure from us?
Many spiritual traditions, especially Eastern, talk about God as complete,
whole and not needing anything at all!
Instead, they talk about infinite perfection.
That sort of seems right to me, but, having said that, if anyone smiles,
and consciously feels they are smiling for God, I guess the collective
good feeling will have increased on the material plane of collective
humanity, and maybe God has this material feel good factor too, but I
don't think it alters the immaterial, infinite plane of completeness,
or God, that is awaiting expression?
Rick quotes the Bible "The Lord looks down from heaven on all
mankind to see if there are any who are wise, who want to please God"
Hmm. I spontaneously want to say that Love is all there is
(God in expression if you like) and as Love is the positive uniting force of,
at least, humanity, if not the Universe, it will seek and attract all humans
that are conscious of their love to their creator and fellow beings.
And if 'God smiles when I trust him', I would say that when we are not
in an enlightened state, of natural communion with God, that we are not
aware of God smiling. But in a naturally enlightened state, we are then
conscious of God smiling as the eternal state.
For me, its like saying, about God smiling, that the upper sky is always
always blue, but we don't see it if we are under, or in, the clouds.
I can't relate to God not smiling, but I see /feel a sort of naturally loving
and smiling wisdom. This works for me.
I have to say, at this stage, that I am not sure if I will keep up the
40 day spiritual journey, as it is not feeling natural to me yet. Certainly
some very worthwhile stuff, and the book is certainly worthy of a good
read, and it really does help us become purpose driven at the highest level,
but I am having some difficulty with the language and terms and some
sort of cross paradigms, at the moment. Lets see what develops.
I will persevere, as the key messages are superb, and worthy of more study
and contemplation.
More at:
http://www.in-love-with-wisdom.com/
